Shadows in the Past
by A Grayer Shade of Gray
Summary: Wolverine being broody, I was bored, sue me.


Logan waits in the cold night, a day dream behind his eyes, the cold memories of a life lived long ago and a man who's life is long past over. He waits in awkward silence, a sound that he has gotten to know and come to love over the years of self induced solitude and isolation. He lives the life he has been given with out regret, remorse something he forgot along time before this date, something he left in Japan, where he left his heart and soul. Logan lives for the comrades who do everything to get closer but reach no avail.   
He doesn't know what he's waiting for or why he hasn't left yet, something about this place calls his soul, a memory from far faded dreams, something from his past world. He can hear the animals scurry about their lives in the thick forest behind them though he does nothing to disturb them. He can smell the faded stench of gun powder and burnt flesh, human flesh, and knows the victim but he is unaware how.   
His eyes are dead to the world as his heart seems cold, the night around him swimming with the infectious sounds of a thousand lives, each and every one a life more worth living to Logan than the one that he has been given. Sometimes he wonders to himself the validity of his choices, what would have happened if he had made a different turn somewhere, would his life be better? Would all those he cared so deeply for still remain so far from his reach?   
During these idle times of thought the words of the past come back to him, names and faces of people he remembers and those of some he doesn't, places he has been in the long span of his life, and the places he has only heard about.   
He is a man of a thousand lifetimes, a man of few words. One who lives for the pride of his own heart and the honor of his friends. He is the Wolverine, a fighting force unlike any other and the scarred and burned land in front of him used to be his home, the final resting place for the Weapon X Projects. What brings him back is unknown, the feelings of nostalgia had never called him like this. It's something rooted further hidden in his mind, something he cannot reach.   
Is it her shadow that haunts him still? The feelings of yearning for the long lost Silver Fox have always been strong but never the strength to cause him to leave his place amid the X Men, not strong enough to make him lean Jean with out a shoulder, Scott's life as an X Man finding itself at an end not long prior. Logan wonders to himself on this silent of silent nights, why is he here? What has drawn the self prescribed ronin to the blank and cold north of Alberta, over five hundred miles from home. Why is he here? What has called him back to that old base?   
In a moment of clarity Logan wonders if he wants to know, if the answers will hold any more enlightenment than any of the others he has received for the questions that he has asked of his life. Nothing is ever easy for the stocky Canadian man who's past blurs between reality and fiction, the fiction seeming so real and the reality too good for fiction. Every step of his life is a fight, every minute a fight for survival that he knows, as sure as the sun rises and sets, he will not win. Yet still he fights on, dreading the silence of his own thoughts at time, other times he prays for the dull drone of life to come to a halt so that the echoing peace of his own thoughts could surround him.   
The soft white light of the moon filters down on him as he sits, a dark sentinel in the darkness, meant to ward off the thoughts of his own life. He waits for something, always waiting. He finds life is a game of waiting, nothing more to be found than what you can wait for. And so, in this rationalization, the worn warrior waits for what called him to this site, the site that has caused so much pain in his life, the site that started the downward spiral his existence has taken on. He sits in wonder waiting for something, someone, to tell him what it is he is waiting for.   
For Logan, it's all about the wait... Always waiting, watching... Waiting for the end, the end of the pain, the end of the sorrow, the end of the life lived over so many long and sad years. The long played out script of his life winding through scenes and acts, every one seeming to have a script but the star who falls through the rungs and into the pit of despair with out a second through of those around him. His fellow man and mutant turning their backs upon him in the darkest hours of his life, unable to discover the side of Logan with in his heart, the brightness locked deep with in the caves of sorrow and heart ache. It is the beauty so jealously guarded that none of his new family, none of those who call him brother, have been able to reach close enough to reach it.   
Ever one step ahead, Logan waits. 


End file.
